Preamble?
"endowed by their Creator...." Natural right.
Natural right to machine guns? Like the old joke about the woman who agrees to sleep with the guy for a million dollars but refuses to do it for a hundred. "We've already established the principle, now we are arguing over details."
But the Devil is in the details. Govt has the authority to regulate our property. We gave it to them. (Consent of the Governed....)
Don't agree with most of what the Govt does with this authority? Fine. Neither do I. But until/unless we can change the laws, this is where we are, for better or worse.
This is the downside to Democracy, the fact that the majority of the people get to determine the general course of events. This is also the upside of Democracy, depending of course, on where you stand on a paticular issue.
I personally would like to see the gun laws return to the pre-1934 status. People should be allowed to own such arms as they see fit (or anything else for that matter), and be severely punished if they harm others.
And before anyone goes to the length of arguing about a "right" to own nuclear weapons, (as often happens in an attempt to show the "idiocy" of the argument), we do own nuclear weapons, in the colletive sense. We just don't allow indivual citizens to keep them at home. That is one of those details.
"endowed by their Creator...." Natural right.
Natural right to machine guns? Like the old joke about the woman who agrees to sleep with the guy for a million dollars but refuses to do it for a hundred. "We've already established the principle, now we are arguing over details."
But the Devil is in the details. Govt has the authority to regulate our property. We gave it to them. (Consent of the Governed....)
Don't agree with most of what the Govt does with this authority? Fine. Neither do I. But until/unless we can change the laws, this is where we are, for better or worse.
This is the downside to Democracy, the fact that the majority of the people get to determine the general course of events. This is also the upside of Democracy, depending of course, on where you stand on a paticular issue.
I personally would like to see the gun laws return to the pre-1934 status. People should be allowed to own such arms as they see fit (or anything else for that matter), and be severely punished if they harm others.
And before anyone goes to the length of arguing about a "right" to own nuclear weapons, (as often happens in an attempt to show the "idiocy" of the argument), we do own nuclear weapons, in the colletive sense. We just don't allow indivual citizens to keep them at home. That is one of those details.